Extensive Field Experience Research Articles

Technological issues in shale oil development using horizontal wells in Ordos Basin, China

The PetroChina Changqing Oilfield Company has successfully achieved large-scale economical development of continental low-pressure freshwater lake interlayer shale oil in the Ordos Basin, China, targeting the gravity-flow sandstone thin interlayers in the organically rich mud shale formation of the seventh member of Yanchang Formation (Chang 7 Member) of Triassic,. Their significant discovery of the 1-billion-ton-level Qingcheng shale oil field, with a proven reserve of 1.052 × 109 t, has marked the establishment of China's first million-ton shale oil development zone. However, the extensive growth in production and construction has brought attention to notable challenges, including geological variances, low initial production, rapid decline, low recovery rates, and high development costs. Based on extensive field experience, this paper identifies several technological issues in shale oil development and offers comprehensive recommendations through systematic analysis. The encounter rate of horizontal shale oil wells, crucial for enhancing individual well productivity, can be improved both vertically and horizontally by prioritizing the extension direction of high-quality reservoirs during the deployment of horizontal wells. The contribution of fracturing fluid elasticity to the recovery rate is relatively low. Reservoir modification should not overemphasize large sand volume, fluid volume, or discharge. Additionally, optimizing parameters such as well spacing, vertical interlayer distribution, and fracture development is essential for maximizing the efficiency of fracturing scale, operation discharge, and other parameters. Variability in hydrocarbon source rock quality and the strength of diagenesis significantly impact oil saturation in sand bodies, affecting the selection of favorable areas and the distribution of high-quality reservoirs. Furthermore, the utilization of pre-fracturing with CO2 proves to be an effective approach in reducing viscosity and increasing the ultimate recovery rate. To ensure the efficient development of shale oil in the Changqing Oilfield, this paper emphasizes the necessity of deepening integrated geological studies, clarifying the main controlling factors of shale oil heterogeneous accumulation, and meticulously depicting three-dimensional sweet spots while exploring more effective development methodologies.

A high performance-oriented AI-enabled IoT-based pest detection system using sound analytics in large agricultural field

The agricultural industry has enormous potential to meet the world's growing need for nutritious and healthful food. However, pests destroy a significant portion of the harvest and reduce quality; thus, farmers struggle to discover pests on their farms. Traditional pest identification methods require scientists with extensive field experience correctly identify pests based on their physical characteristics. Pesticides harm food and agriculture. IoT technology uses many affordable sensor devices to collect real-time data on pest-related agricultural development characteristics. The research paper aims to develop an AI-enabled real-time, IoT-based automatic pest detection system using sound pest analytics and IoT networks in the sizeable agricultural field. The proposed method used audio pre-processing techniques in sound analytics such as HPF, Hann window, hop window, FFT, DFT, STFT, and MFCC algorithm for denoising the pest sound, removing the spectral leakage, converting overlapping to non-overlapping frames, converting the time to the frequency domain, determining frequency spectrum, detecting sinusoidal frequency and internal component, extracting the MFCCs feature respectively. The characteristics and other statistical metrics were collected from 500 pest sounds and trained, validated, and evaluated using the CNN, LSTM, Bi-LSTM, and CNN-Bi-LSTM network models. The extracting features and different statistical measurements were compared during the testing process. The proposed system integrated the CNN and Bi-LSTM techniques called CNN-Bi-LSTM model for training, validating, and testing. From the experimental results, it has been observed that, the proposed CNN-Bi-LSTM model achieved 98.91 % accuracy, 96.8 % sensitivity, 97.96 % specificity, 98.54 % recall, 98.63 % precision, and 98.58 % F1 score, which is better compared to CNN, LSTM, Bi-LSTM and also existing ANN, DCNN, and VGG-16 state-of-the-art techniques.

Implementasi Supervisi Klinis untuk Meningkatkan Profesionalitas Guru

The aim of this article is to learn more about how clinical supervision is used to enhance teacher professionalism. Professional teachers are teachers who have the skills to carry out educational and teaching tasks. Thus, the definition of an expert educator is a person who has extraordinary ability and mastery in the field of education so that he can carry out his obligations and abilities as a teacher with maximum abilities. Professional teachers are also educated, trained, and have extensive field experience. This research uses descriptive qualitative research, which is an analysis that uses words or sentences to describe a situation or. The results of research on the use of clinical supervision to improve teacher professionalism at MTsS Hidayatullah, teachers are very flexible, starting from plans that are only communicated to them in regular weekly meetings by the school principal. Only minor problems were encountered, and these problems were not too serious because prospective teachers met the minimum standards when they started at MTsS Hidayatullah. The teacher asks for help to overcome his teaching difficulties, which is why clinical is used here.

Collaboration: the key to investigations of emerging and re-emerging diseases

Countries need teams of well trained epidemiologists with extensive field experience to work with clinicians and laboratory scientists to conduct prompt and effective outbreak investigations of epidemics. To identify these outbreaks of possible emerging or re-emerging problems, existing surveillance must be strengthened and the quality of data validated routinely. In addition, ministry of health officials and international agencies need an open, collaborative, scientific work environment. The best environment to design effective interventions and control measures to limit the impact of these newly identified problems on the public’s health is one of cooperation and collaboration

Pediatric Simulation-Based Prehospital Training Course in Botswana.

This simulation-based training focuses on the most common and high risk pediatric prehospital scenarios in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). The curriculum was developed based on a needs assessment to train Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOHW) prehospital providers in Botswana specifically for pediatric resuscitation and could be used for emergency medical services (EMS) providers in other LMIC. After participating in this curriculum, providers should enhance their assessment and interventions in acutely ill pediatric prehospital patients. The entire course was designed to be presented over two days with 6-8 hours of instruction each day. In recent years, prehospital medicine has shown continued growth in LMICs, specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa. As these programs develop focused training for the pediatric population, equipping the workforce with pediatric resuscitation skills is essential. A few years after its inception, the Botswana MOHW identified deficiencies in their current training program and sought external expertise and educational training. We partnered with the MOHW to create and implement a novel, prehospital simulation curriculum to teach pediatric resuscitation to prehospital providers. Our aim was to create a curriculum based on the needs of the community that could also be implemented in other similar resource-limited settings. This course included didactic sessions, five simulation scenarios using low fidelity mannequins and three pediatric-focused skill sessions. This program was found to be effective based on statistically significant improvement in written and simulation post-test scores. The objective of this educational project was to design, implement, and evaluate a curriculum relevant to an EMS system based in a LMIC, so that it could be a basis for curricula for use in similar contexts. The educational goal is to improve prehospital providers performance in common pediatric resuscitations. The educational methods used in this curriculum included simulation using rapid cycle deliberate practice (RCDP), didactic lectures, and hands on skills training for common pediatric scenarios. Outcomes were measured by comparing performance on written and simulation-based pre-and post-tests. Participants completed written and simulation-based pre- and post-tests covering the concepts taught in the curriculum. Continuous variables (written and simulation test scores) were compared between two dependent groups (pre- and post-trainings) using paired t-tests. Mean written test scores increased by 11%, from 75% to 86% (p<0.0001), while mean simulated test scores increased by 22% (from 56% to 78 % (p<0.0001). The curriculum we developed focused on high-yield pediatric skills based on the needs of the Botswana MOHW EMS program. We believe simulation training was an excellent and effective method for this type of training. We specifically designed RCDP scenarios for the training, due to the limited experience of the prehospital providers at that time. RCDP offers ample opportunities for feedback with immediate practice and improvement. Trainees demonstrated retention of knowledge and improved performance in simulation-based testing. The overall satisfaction level of the trainees was high and suggests additional training would be beneficial and desired. Additionally, as the results of our needs assessment mirrored common chief complaints in other LMIC countries in Sub-Saharan Africa1,2 we feel that this curriculum can be utilized and adopted with minor modifications in other LMIC settings, particularly where EMS programs are developing and in circumstances where few EMS providers have had extensive field experience. Respiratory distress, asthma, dehydration, hypovolemic shock, hypoglycemia, seizure, toxic ingestion, newborn resuscitation, precipitous delivery, traumatic injury, EMS, Botswana, global health, collaboration, rapid cycle deliberate practice (RCDP), medical simulation.

Job Research for Medical Skincare by DACUM

Purpose: This study aimed to systematize the scope of work through a stepwise definition and description of the job of esthetician in medical skincare by applying the developing a curriculum (DACUM) technique. In addition, the importance, difficulty, and frequency of use of the job was checked and provided as basic data that can be used in the medical skincare industry and educational sites. Methods: For the job research of medical skincare workers, a total of five experts with extensive field experience were selected as DACUM members. As a result of DACUM analysis, the jobs of medical skincare workers were derived from 9 duties and 18 tasks. Results: In this study, the job of medical skincare workers was defined as the use of medical devices with a cosmetic medical program and management of cosmeceutical products, which are applied to customers who have been professionally diagnosed with skin problems by a dermatologist. As a result of DACUM, among the medical skincare jobs, the importance, difficulty, and frequency of use of “knowing hospital reception practice,” “understanding human anatomy physiological knowledge,” and “understanding beauty equipment practice” were high. The importance and frequency of use of “medical hygiene management” were also high. Conclusion: The findings of this study present standardization of medical skincare workers’ jobs and provide data for the development of the curriculum.

РЕЖИМЫ АВТОНОМНОСТИ В ВОСТОЧНОЙ СИБИРИ: МЕДИЦИНСКИЕ ПРАКТИКИ В УСЛОВИЯХ ТУНДРЫ, ТАЙГИ И СТЕПЕЙ

The article is a reflection of social anthropologists-specialists in Siberia on the topic of current changes in the field of communication and global mobility, caused by growing epidemiological risks reinforced by the pandemic situation, in particular the spread of the COVID-19. Local communities of Siberia and the Arctic can be characterized by special skills of the autonomous existence and use of local medical knowledge in a situation of remoteness from resource distribution centers and relative isolation. In the light of modern changes and the risk of spread of infections, the local medical knowledge and skills accumulated by the representatives of these communities are turning into an important resource, which allows using survival and health maintaining strategies in severe climatic conditions and in situations of supply shortages. The article is based on the extensive field experience of the authors working in three different regions of Eastern Siberia, and includes materials collected among Chukchis, Evenkis, Buryats and Soyots. The existence in a situation of a relative isolation and remoteness formed among local people special ways of interacting with the state, the economic sphere and the natural environment, aimed at maintaining the existing autonomy regimes based on following the rules of environmental ethics, rational and economical use of available resources, their secondary use and utilization. The authors analyzed examples of the local strategies that allowed to minimize the possible risks connected with the spread of diseases, as well as provide medical assistance in a situation of a relative remoteness.

Collaboration for preliminary design of a mobile health solution for ambulance dispatch in Rwanda

The first 60 minutes after a trauma are described as “the golden hour.” For each minute of prehospital time, the risk of dying increases by 5% (Sampalis et al., 1999). Since 90% of the global burden of injuries occur in low- and middle-income countries and lead to 5.8 million deaths annually, addressing rapid access to emergency services is critical in these settings (Nielsen et al., 2012). In most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), there are no formal trauma systems, and many lack organized prehospital care (Nielsen et al., 2012). Emergency medical dispatch and communication systems are a foundational component of emergency medical services (World Health Organization, 2005). Yet there are no established recommendations of creating these systems inLMICs.Rwanda, a country of over 12 million people, is a rapidly developing leader in East Africa. The Ministry of Health of Rwanda established the Service d’Aide Medicale Urgente (SAMU) in 2007, recognizing the need for public emergency medical services. SAMU’s national dispatch center receives roughly 3,000 calls per month through a national 912 hotline. It organizes regional transportation with 260 total ambulances located at hospitals throughout the country and provides prehospital emergency services in the capital city of Kigali with a fleet of 12 ambulances. In the city, each ambulance has a driver, nurse and anesthetist dispatched for every call. Emergency department nursing and anesthetist staff are dispatched from hospitals around the country to respond to regional emergencies. No formal prehospital cadre of the workforce exists although the SAMU staffhave extensive field experience in prehospital care. SAMU has several challenges to rapid prehospital emergency care including lack of addresses beyond the capital city, unclear location data in densely populated areas, complex communication processes with little information about health facility capacity, and no established electronic dispatch system. The average response time for SAMU ambulances was 59 minutes in 2018, but 39% of calls were not completed within the golden hour.

(Invited) Fuel Cells for Heavy Duty Vehicles

The commercialization of fuel cell products for a variety of applications including forklifts, buses, cars and heavy duty trucks is well underway. Particularly in the heavy duty fuel cell market, recent studies suggest that in Europe, fuel cell electric buses (FCEB) total cost of ownership (TCO) will breakeven with battery electric buses (BEB) by 2023, and with internal combustion engine buses (ICEB) by 20241. For applications such as long-distance and heavy-duty transportation, the hydrogen route appears the decarbonisation option of choice, and can become cost competitive with internal combustion engines by 20302.Over the past 30 years, Ballard has developed a wide array of technology “building blocks” for Fuel Cell stacks components. The application requirements (duty cycle, speed, vehicle weight, lifetime and environmental exposure) will determine the key stack features and result in customization of components where economically viable. In contrast with fuel cell stacks developed for passenger cars, Fuel Cells for heavy duty vehicles are particularly challenged by high durability requirements3, with MEA attributes such as catalyst loading and peak efficiency point significantly affecting stack and fuel costs.Building on proven and demonstrated stack durability in the field of more than 35,000 hours in heavy duty vehicles4 Ballard’s MEA development activities draw from extensive field experience to support step changes in durability with each subsequent product iteration. The use of an accelerated testing and modeling approach developed and validated over numerous product iterations enables continuous cost decreases and gains in power density, operational robustness and reliability, with a calculated risk tolerance for new technology introduction.Those MEA durability prediction models along with a good understanding of failure mechanisms are a cornerstone to developing the next generation of Fuel Cells for heavy duty vehicles. Of particular importance is the use of the voltage degradation model to evaluate the time to reach the degradation target for heavy duty applications (USDOE Ultimate target of 10% degradation at 30,000 hours5). Simulation results as a function of the electrode composition show the relationship between cathode catalyst loading and lifetime, and assist in making electrode design and composition choices for a successfully durable product. A sharp increase in voltage loss is observed when local oxygen transport resistance becomes limiting once the cathode reaches low surface area. Maximizing beginning-of-life catalyst electrochemical surface area (ECSA) utilization in the electrode structure, as well as optimizing surface area retention, can have significant benefits for lifetime. A combination of design choices or processing parameters during catalyst layer fabrication can be effective ways to optimize the electrode6.The same voltage degradation model is used to demonstrate the relationship between lifetime and the peak operating current density of the product, which limits the stack design power density within the allocated voltage degradation constraints of heavy-duty vehicles.The simulation results demonstrate that the ideal Fuel Cell stack for heavy duty applications is the result of complex trade-offs between cost, stack design attributes (e.g. catalyst loading), active area sizing (peak efficiency point) and durability, with the ultimate goal to achieve an attractive TCO for wide acceptance of the technology. References Deloitte and Ballard. (2020). Fueling the Future of Mobility: Hydrogen and fuel cell solutions for transportation. Volume 1 [White paper]. Deloitte China. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/cn/Documents/finance/deloitte-cn-fueling-the-future-of-mobility-en-200101.pdf McKinsey & Company and Hydrogen Council. (2020). Path to hydrogen competitiveness: A cost perspective. https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/19006_hydrogen_class8_long_haul_truck_targets.pdfMacauley, N., Lauritzen, M., Knights, S. and Kjeang, E., J. Electrochem. Soc., 165(10), F780 (2018).https://www.ballard.com/about-ballard/newsroom/news-releases/2020/01/27/ballard-powers-fuel-cell-electric-vehicles-for-unprecedented-30-million-kilometers-enough-to-circle-the-globe-750-timesUSDOE Hydrogen Class 8 Long Haul Truck Targets https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/19006_hydrogen_class8_long_haul_truck_targets.pdf M. Dutta, A. Young, V. Colbow, J. Bellerive, S. Knights, Examining Catalyst Layer Design Strategies for Improved Fuel Cell Performance and Durability, ECS PRiME 2020

A IDENTIDADE INDÍGENA E A AFIRMAÇÃO ÉTNICA: UM PERCURSO TRAÇADO PELA RELIGIÃO

O Dossiê reúne textos que presenteiam o ambiente acadêmico pela qualidade e relevância dos temas abordados e pelas contribuições baseadas em reflexões fundamentadas e ponderadas, muitas das quais são frutos de ampla pesquisa de campo e de vivências em comunidades indígenas. Na tentativa de resumir este número em uma frase, eu diria que apresenta discussões sobre a heterogeneidade da religiosidade indígena, procurando evidenciar o sagrado como elemento formador da identidade indígena e potencializador da afirmação e do pertencimento étnico.

A Standard Framework for Population-Based Neuroepidemiological Studies in Tropical Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Methodologies of population-based studies on neurological diseases in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have not been standardized. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the numerous challenges occurring in this context and propose a standard framework for population-based studies in LMICs. We relied on our expertise on few diseases, epilepsy and neurodegenerative disorders. The proposed framework is the result of extensive field experience in tropical LMICs. It ensures that important steps are not forgotten when setting up a study plan. It must remain flexible and be adapted to each situation, to the disease studied, in particular its prevalence, but also to the geography of the study area and the availability of survey technologies.

Investigating effective maintenance policies for urban networks of residential cities by using optimum and sensitivity analyses

Rural and urban networks have been rapidly expanding over time, so there is a rising demand for more optimum maintenance policies (MPs). The low traffic weights on the urban network of a residential city makes the appearance and density of load-associated distresses rare. This encourages the city’s transportation agency to depend on limited treatment choices and the subjective judgement of the agency’s engineers in managing maintenance and rehabilitation (M&amp;R) activities. The engineers’ judgement reflects their extensive field experience and is usually used in this type of city rather than generating optimal computerized solutions. The present study proposes two alternative MPs that are more objective than the policy that depends on engineers’ judgement. One of the proposed alternative policies allows one M&amp;R action along the planning horizon and the other allows multiple M&amp;R actions. The optimum analysis showed that the preventive treatment is the optimal action for more than 50% of the network segments, which means that it plays a vital and nonnegligible role in improving the effectiveness of the M&amp;R activities. Moreover, the sensitivity of the generated M&amp;R plans to the initial performance of the pavement, traffic volume, and the objectives weights is investigated to determine the optimal time, suitable action, maintenance need, and optimal objective weights. The sensitivity analysis showed that varying objective weights leads to different optimal and rational solutions and the most cost-effective solution is not achieved at equal weights for objectives.

Pre-Service Teachers’ Resistance to Multicultural Education Courses: The Binary Fear of the Familiar and the Unfamiliar Communities

Abstract This paper discusses pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) resistance to some of the core concepts of multicultural education in a large Midwestern university. The data collected from document reviews, observations, and interviews with a selected group of PSTs point to cultural-ecological factors as major sources of the resistance. The paper examines these cultural-ecological factors correlating to PSTs’ fear of introducing multicultural concepts in their future suburban schools as well as their fear of cultural incongruity in the the urban schools. The study calls for an intensive and extensive multidimensional field experiences to familiarize PSTs with the unfamiliar cultures while providing them dialogic tools to informally engage their own communities on sensitive topics covered in multicultural education.

Introduction

Introduction

Body — identity — society: Concepts of the socially accepted body in the 20th century in Hungarian rural areas

Wide-ranging research has shown that cleanliness is both a social and a historical construct, that is, a relative rather than an absolute concept. The rather complex social and psychological context and causes of cleansing change with time and space. The social change characterized by modernization and urbanization in the first half of the 20th century had a profound effect on the mentality, way of life and social behavior of Hungarian peasantry as well, including the meaning of cleanliness and related customs. The aim of the paper is to analyze the practices and customs related to washing and bathing and their modification triggered by socio-economic and political change. The first part of the article gives a brief clarification of the terms “cleanliness” and “hygiene,” surveys Hungarian and international research on the topic, and presents a brief history of cleansing as a universal custom. In the second part, the author outlines a socio-historical model of the major stages of change in Hungarian village habits of cleanliness based on extensive field experience.

Central–local conflicts in China’s environmental policy implementation: the case of the sloping land conversion program

Deforestation since the 1980s has led to substantial loss of ecological services in China. As a responsive strategy, China launched the most ambitious reforestation efforts in the developing world. However, like many other environmental policies, forestry policy has not been effectively implemented, mainly due to the fragmentation nature in China’s environmental governance institution. This paper highlights the impact of central–local conflicts on forestry policy implementation. With insufficient motivation, local governments tend to minimize their efforts in planning, monitoring, and supporting reforestation activities, which poses great challenges on the sustainability of the reforestation benefits. With extensive field experiences, this paper also raises three innovative strategies to solve the financial dilemma that leads to the effort minimization phenomenon, with both the advantages and disadvantages for each strategy critically discussed. It finally recommends ways by which the central government could improve design of reforestation policies, or other large-scale ecological programs, which involve local governments as a key liaison.

Jaret C. Daniels (ed.): Butterfly conservation in North America. Efforts to help save our charismatic microfauna

This edited book is stated to be ‘a basic primer for practitioners interested in working with butterflies’. It was developed from a series of national workshops on butterfly conservation and management held for conservation practitioners from many North American institutions and agencies, and from the viewpoint that many managers are relatively unfamiliar with butterflies and lack expertise with them. A series of nine chapters (from a collective 20 authors, many of them well-known and respected lepidopterists with extensive field experience) provide a useful and unusual compendium and insight—it is indeed rare to find a book on North American butterfly conservation in which the Monarch and Checkerspots get only casual mentions, and in which the works of many of the pioneers of the discipline in the region are not cited prominently. I found myself initially seeking a foothold in the book— largely because of the absence of a clear preface or introduction to its rationale and scope, and lack of any editorial overview to summarise the content and provide perspective. The above comments on genesis and scope, for example, are gleaned from the book’s acknowledgements and the abstract to the first full chapter. That said, the book contains much clear practical and original advice and basic information, is logically arranged, and will be welcomed by many butterfly enthusiasts as providing a modern perspective of how butterfly conservation is progressing in the United States. Each chapter is referenced independently and also includes a summary of key points discussed. The first six essays deal with general themes, the next two consider conservation of individual species, and the concluding essay assesses the major features of butterfly conservation and its differences from those of generally more familiar large vertebrates. Whilst much of the detail implicit in some European butterfly conservation studies is not yet routine in North America, the perspectives presented have very wide value, and proponents for butterfly conservation throughout the world will find much to stimulate and advance their interests. The book is declaredly parochial, but brings much hitherto difficult-to-find information to welcome wider attention, and should do much to advance a wider embracing strategy for butterfly conservation in the region. The first chapter, entitled ‘Butterfly recovery planning: determining how to contribute’ (Daniels, Magdich, Tolson), sets out clearly the basic components of butterfly conservation strategies and presents a guide to options for becoming involved, aided by a series of decision trees soliciting well-planned rational involvement based on the five limiting parameters that apply to any organisation (as funds, time, space, personnel, staff expertise). Many prospective participants will be made aware of practicalities they might not have considered fully. A chapter on roles of Zoos and Aquaria (Grow, Allard, Luke) emphasises their varied and important contributions to butterfly husbandry, conservation and education, and notes that butterfly exhibits occur at approximately 70 such institutions. The third chapter, on Butterfly monitoring (Taron, Ries), is a clear summary of sampling/inspection approaches with the assumptions, advantages, and practical and logistic limitations of each discussed. It includes an inventory of North American butterfly monitoring programmes, leading to the formation of the North American Butterfly Monitoring network, with its six major goals & Tim R. New T.New@latrobe.edu.au

Settling Saskatchewan by Alan B. Anderson (review)

Reviewed by: Settling Saskatchewan by Alan B. Anderson John C. Lehr Settling Saskatchewan. By Alan B. Anderson. Regina: University of Regina Press, 2013. vii + 485 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $39.95 paper. Canada’s Prairie Provinces were settled by many peoples, both indigenous and immigrant. While the scholarly literature has described and analyzed the process and pattern of settlement of various ethnic and ethnoreligious groups on the Canadian Prairies, Alan Anderson’s latest work, Settling Saskatchewan, is the first to offer a comprehensive and detailed evaluation of the ethnoreligious settlement of an entire province. [End Page 185] Saskatchewan was first settled by indigenous peoples, including Denesuline, Cree, and Métis, followed by a dizzying array of European groups (ranging from Belgians to Ukrainians), North Americans, including Ontario British and Oklahoma Blacks, as well as peoples from Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. To inventory and analyze this kaleidoscope of ethnoreligious settlement is a formidable undertaking, one requiring a familiarity with a vast multidisciplinary literature and, equally importantly, extensive field experience. Professor Anderson demonstrates he has both. Settling Saskatchewan is organized thematically. Chapter 1 sets the stage by explaining the administrative and social frameworks that underpinned settlement, addressing some issues of defining group settlement, and explaining the array of sources used to assemble the data. Thereafter the book proceeds to examine various ethnic and ethnoreligious groups, which are grouped under broad chapter headings: Aboriginal reserves and settlements, British settlements, Germanic settlements, Ukrainian and Polish settlements, the settlements of other eastern European groups, French settlements, Nordic settlements, other settlements, and urban minorities. A concluding chapter, “Changing Times,” reviews the evolution of Saskatchewan society from a variety of sociological and demographic perspectives, considering, among other things, endogamy, geographic mobility, the impact of rural depopulation, and ethnic and religious identity. Settling Saskatchewan is well written and thoroughly documented. Following each chapter there is a useful bibliography suggesting key resources for those wishing to delve more deeply into the groups under discussion. Endnotes to each chapter appear at the end of the book, preceding a lengthy “Selected Bibliography.” Mostly very thorough, the bibliography and notes fail to include a few expected items, some of which may have appeared too late for inclusion. Some of the data relating to the current scene, about Hutterites, for example, is slightly dated, though this is hardly surprising given the scope of the work. Perhaps the book’s most surprising deficiency is the total absence of maps. While it is difficult to depict the incredibly complex distribution of often intermixed peoples, a few maps to show the areas where the principal groups settled would really enhance the usefulness and appeal of the volume. Readers outside the prairie region, unfamiliar with the geography of Saskatchewan, will find this a frustrating omission. Even a general location map would be beneficial. Notwithstanding these essentially minor shortcomings, Settling Saskatchewan remains a remarkable work of meticulous scholarship destined to become the principal resource for anyone wishing to gain a scholarly perspective on the settlement of Saskatchewan. It should be in the library of anyone interested in the settlement of western Canada, as well as in the collections of all those with an interest in the history, geography, and sociology of Saskatchewan. John C. Lehr Department of Geography University of Winnipeg Copyright © 2015 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Mechanization of Conservation Agriculture for Smallholders: Issues and Options for Sustainable Intensification

Conservation agriculture (CA) is an increasingly adopted production system to meet the goals of sustainable crop production intensification in feeding a growing world population whilst conserving natural resources. Mechanization (especially power units, seeders, rippers and sprayers) is a key input for CA and smallholder farmers often have difficulties in making the necessary investments. Donors may be able to provide mechanization inputs in the short term, but this is not a sustainable solution as a machinery input supply chain needs to be built up to continue availability after external interventions cease. Local manufacture should be supported, as was the case in Brazil, but this is a slow development process, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. A more immediate solution is to equip and train CA service provision entrepreneurs. With the right equipment, selected for the needs of their local clientele, and the right technical and business management training, such entrepreneurs can make a livelihood by supplying high quality CA and other mechanization services on a fully costed basis. Elements of the required training, based on extensive field experience, are provided. To catalyse the growth of CA providers’ business, the market can be stimulated for an initial period by issuing e-vouchers for services and inputs.

Promotoras as data collectors in a large study of physical activity in parks.

There is a large literature on promotores' involvement in health promotion and a smaller literature on their roles in data collection, most often among predominantly Latino populations. But the extent to which promotores can be successful as the primary data collectors across racially/ethnically and socioeconomically diverse neighborhoods is less well documented. In a study of physical activity in 50 urban neighborhood parks, we found that a team of Spanish/English bilingual promotoras (female promotores) successfully implemented a direct observation protocol in all participant neighborhoods and achieved high interrater reliability (.80-.98). Overall, they were also effective in administering surveys to park users and residents across the racially/ethnically diverse neighborhoods. The promotoras brought to the project important language skills and cultural sensitivity, surveying experience, and familiarity with human subjects and confidentiality issues. Their extensive field experience gained over the course of a long-term collaborative effort helped improve survey and observation protocols. The promotoras reported gaining professional skills, which can strengthen their contributions to other projects. The promotoras were accustomed to being a source of information, and collecting rather than providing information was challenging for some and had to be addressed in order to avoid contamination across study groups.